WildFire Storage: Enterprise Storage Stack Software Converts Random Write Workload of SAN, NAS, VDI, Cloud, Data Base or Media Application Into Linearized Workload

While enterprise SSDs remain expensive, near line and read intensive SSDs are poised for a radical price drop. 

Current 7.68GB read-intensive data center drives are below 24 cents a gigabyte. 2TB consumer SSDs are under 15 cents a gigabyte. 

Many pundits predict an oversupply of low endurance flash which could drive SSD prices below 10 cents a gigabyte.

The opportunity of the crash is the ability to manufacture all-flash storage at costs close to those of HDDs. The challenge is delivering storage which exploits these new low-cost SSDs while maximizing performance and reliability.

WildFire Storage (EasyCo LLC) has been optimizing the performance and durability of SSD arrays for over 10 years. Its patented Enterprise Storage Stack software transparently converts the random write workload of SAN, NAS, VDI, cloud, database, or media application into a linearized workload that is perfect for SSDs and SSD arrays. More importantly, you don’t have to change your application.

The results of ESS are dramatic. Random write speeds rise to the composite sequential write speed of the SSDs in an array. Small IO/s are measured in the millions rather than tens of thousands. Perfect alignment gets rid of garbage collection as well as RAID- and data-amplification issues. ESS-managed SSDs can increase the useful life of low endurance SSDs by a factor of thirty.

Lower Wear and no SSD Slowdowns
Drives write at full speed without degradation over time. A 400MB/sec drive will continue to write at 400MB/s for decades without slowing down.

For Low Endurance Flash
By lowering the write amplification of the entire storage stack, company’ software is what low endurance flash needs. Even sub 1,000 endurance flash can last for decades when managed y ESS.

Parity RAID Without Penalties
When managed by ESS, RAID-5 and RAID-6 write faster than the same drives configured RAID-10. This turns storage on it’s head. You can get speed and maximum capacity at the same time.

More Efficient Writes Than Bare Drives
ESS lowers system write overhead. Random writes thru ESS have lower system overhead than writing directly to SSDs RAID-0. Less overhead on writes leaves more CPU time for reads, and your other applications.

QLC Flash
ESS is perfect for the new 4-bit-per-cell QLC drives coming from Micron, Intel, and others. With 24 of these 8TB drives configured with ESS and RAID-6, you get over 2 million 4K random write IO/s at over 8GB/s. You also get 125PB of array life even with these low endurance drives. These new data center SSDs are expected to break 20 cents a gigabyte at launch, and go down from there.

HDD Parity
8TB 7,200rm HDDs are currently at just above 4 cents a gigabyte. Mirror them and add in chassis and operating costs, and you are above 10 cents a gigabyte. AFAs managed by ESS still are a little more expensive, but they are faster, denser, and more reliable. Now is the time to start migrating anything that is not ‘glacial storage’ away from spinning media.

WildFire Storage has solutions to keep flash costs down and performance and longevity up. It knows where NVMe makes sense and when it is utterly stupid. It watches every aspect of a system’s costs and performance, but also care about protecting data. It knows how ZFS and Ceph, and a lot of other stuff works, and why they often perform so poorly.

The firm also works with OEMs to get its technology to customers that don’t buy into the high costs and huge overhead of the ‘big vendors’ offerings.